NASA launches powerful Roman Space Telescope, a spy satellite turned to the stars

NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a repurposed spy satellite, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday. The $4 billion project, carried by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is designed to investigate cosmic mysteries such as dark energy and dark matter, test gravity, and search for exoplanets. The telescope will orbit a million miles from Earth at Lagrange Point 2, with its mission planned for five years, potentially extending to ten.

"It feels like I'm on the edge of a precipice, and we're just about to set a foot off into the unknown," said Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist.

Originally a spy satellite donated by the National Reconnaissance Office, Roman will complement the James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes by offering panoramic views of the cosmos, surveying the entire Milky Way in a month. It is expected to beam back its first high-resolution images before the winter holidays and will create the most comprehensive 3D map of the universe to date, covering over two billion galaxies to help understand dark energy and dark matter. The telescope will also conduct an extensive search for exoplanets, aiming to discover thousands and provide a statistical census of planetary systems.